


14%

by constantblur



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: I'M PAMPERING MYSELF WITH PREEMPTIVE EP9 VICTURI IN CASE WE DON'T ACTUALLY GET ANY, IDK I FEEL LIKE WE'LL BARELY SEE VICTOR IN EP9 IF WE EVEN SEE HIM AT ALL, M/M, emo-tinged fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-28
Updated: 2016-11-28
Packaged: 2018-09-02 19:43:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8680978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/constantblur/pseuds/constantblur
Summary: Low battery. But he’s not going to not take this call.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Gays on Ice ruined my life, do I get a membership card for joining this club or—

His morning had started at 2:30 AM when he’d slid out of bed and promptly tripped on the phone cord he hadn’t been able to find last night. _Of course_ , Victor had thought morosely as he’d plugged his phone in, letting it take whatever power it could suck up in the time it took him to brush his teeth and dress.

There’d been a harrowing cab ride through back streets he’d ordered the driver to take when the main roads looked too congested—getting the cab in the first place had been its own ordeal of watching driver after driver cruise past with their “off duty” lights on before Victor had finally stepped off the curb in front of one of them and offered to pay double—and then had come the painfully slow process of shuffling step by tortuous step through airport security. A forgotten water bottle in his carry-on had stalled Victor for an extra ten minutes as the TSA officer combed through the bag to ensure Victor hadn’t stashed some other contraband inside. Finally released to head to his gate, Victor had checked the time, seen that he still had over an hour left until his flight was to start boarding, briefly despaired over that extra hour he could have spent warm and comfortable in bed, and then had slumped into a café for a very large coffee.

It’s now nearly 5 AM and he’s sitting in his terminal, coffee long gone and boredom well settled into his psyche. Flying alone isn’t something Victor does all that often, and it’s just now occurring to him that he had not taken the fact of many, many hours of Solo Victor into consideration while packing. He has no books to read or DVDs to pop into his laptop . . . nothing to do but think of the man he’s leaving behind to fly to the side of the family he may already be too late to say goodbye to.

He needs _distraction_. It’s tempting to take out his phone and pull up some mindless gaming app; Victor’s phone has accumulated many of those due to Yuri’s own need for distraction when they’re stuck in traffic on the way to a competition. Yuri tends to keep his own phone buried deep in his bag—probably, Victor assumes, to keep himself from recklessly reading news articles about the event and the critical comments about himself that might come up, though Yuri could just be avoiding phone calls from his mother. At any rate, it’s never long before Victor’s own phone is snatched from his hands as Yuri folds himself into the seat, fingers tapping away on a screen mere inches from his face as if Yuri’s trying to convince himself no world exists outside that 3x5 display.

Unfortunately, any diversion his phone might give him right now would be too temporary and too senseless when the result would be a dead battery. Victor’s going to need to call Minako when he lands, after all. He can’t turn it off yet—just in case—but he doesn’t even want to take the phone out of sleep mode just to see how much battery power it actually has left; might as well just leave it alone and hope it doesn’t drain out before he reaches Tokyo.

But now he finds himself faced with the horrifying reality that he is utterly unprepared to face the next ten hours with nothing but his thoughts for company.

Victor sighs and slumps into the seat.

And his phone begins to ring.

Victor immediately sits up with a flutter of panic streaking down his spine. _Shit_. Is it Mari calling about Makkachin? Is he—?

_Breathe_. Victor rubs a hand over his face, an unthinking gesture—like easing away the frown lines will really make him feel any less troubled—and pulls his phone out of his pocket.

It’s Yuri.

Victor smiles reflexively—it’s part relief and part, well, it’s _Yuri_. Calling at an hour Victor is fairly certain Yuri’s only ever been awake to greet by staying up all night anyway.

The smile drops away as it occurs to Victor that that fact could mean trouble. This call might be coming from a Yuri swaddled in blankets and panic.

Victor’s eyes flick to the battery icon on his phone. It reads _14%_ next to the red line of the nearly empty battery.

He thumbs the button to accept the call. “Good morning,” Victor says, far too brightly.

“Good morning,” Yuri replies, and Victor’s insides can’t quite figure out how to react to that sleep-husky tone. “You didn’t wake me.”

“Well, that’s certainly a miracle considering how very hard I tried what with all the walking into walls and tripping over things in the dark I managed,” Victor says.

“You should have,” Yuri says grumpily. “I didn’t get to say goodbye.”

Victor blinks. “Yuri, you have a competition today. I wasn’t going to wake you when you needed to sleep.”

“You _should_ have.”

Victor wants to argue right back because, hello, he has a valid point and Yuri’s being a stubborn idiot. But instead he’s damn near about to melt away. There’s a high stakes competition only hours away, the first one this season Yuri will face without anyone from his personal support system beside him—and he doesn’t even care right now. He’d wanted to say goodbye.

“Have you heard anything more about Makkachin?” Yuri asks.

“No, not yet,” Victor says. “I don’t know how long a surgery like this lasts. I haven’t heard from Mari yet so I assume he’s still . . . “

“If she hasn’t called, that means nothing bad has happened,” Yuri says firmly.

_Yet_ , Victor thinks. “I should have called her,” he says, and there’s a faintly nervous laugh that accompanies the next words, “but to be honest, I’m afraid of what she might say.”

Makkachin’s always had a mischievous streak. He’ll act like an angel when he knows he’s got eyes on him, sure. But leave him home alone or simply fail to lavish him with the attention he believes he deserves at least every other minute of the day and you’ve got Trouble. Victor supposes it’s Makkachin’s special brand of punishment: _I’ve been deprived of belly rubs for an entire fifteen minutes and now you must suffer as I have suffered_.

He doesn’t blame the Katsuki family, not at all. Makkachin’s always had a habit of sneaking food he shouldn’t; usually it just results in Victor being put out at not being able to enjoy something he’d been saving for later, though sometimes Makkachin grants him an extra surprise and throws up on the carpet. Victor doesn’t expect anyone to keep an eye on Makkachin at all times when he can’t manage it either, and he certainly understands the difficulty of looking away from Yuri while he’s on the ice—God knows he isn’t able to. It’s no one’s fault. If anything, it’s his for never properly disciplining Makkachin when a plate of cookies disappeared from the counter or when Victor would leave his soup on the table just to come back to an empty bowl.

Makkachin’s a little devil hiding behind a teddy bear face, and Victor will be utterly _shattered_ if he loses him. He’s Victor’s family.

“I’m so sorry, Victor,” Yuri says in a wobbling tone. “I should’ve told my parents to—“

“No, none of that,” Victor interrupts. “I told you already. This is no one’s fault.”

“You trusted us to take care of him, though,” Yuri continues. “He was my family’s responsibility and we fail—“

“Yuri,” Victor says sharply, “you are not to ever, in any circumstance, say that you failed. Are we clear?”

“But Makkachin—“

“Could have wound up in this situation even if he’d been at home with me. I love the pest, but I certainly can’t watch him every minute of every day. I would never expect your parents to either.” Victor softens his tone. “It was an accident. No one is to blame here, Yuri. So stop pleading guilty to something that isn’t even a crime.”

He hears Yuri let out a shaky breath over the line. “Okay,” Yuri says quietly.

“Now listen to me, Yuri,” Victor says. “You’re not to think of Makkachin today. That’s my job. You can say a prayer for him now—he’d appreciate it and so would I—but then you put him from your mind. You cast away everything but the music. I want you thinking about the music so deeply that every move you make between now and when you get back into bed tonight is in time to its rhythm. You are the music, and the music is you. That’s all you know today. Okay?”

“Okay, _Coach_ ,” Yuri says; the petulant tone perks Victor up considerably.

“As long as you remember the music and what it means, you’re going to win the gold tonight,” Victor says.

It’s only a short pause, and he imagines Yuri worrying at the lip Victor had bitten last night. “I’ll give it everything I have.” He sounds unsure, but Victor knows he will.

“I wish I could be there with you,” Victor says, and he’s a little embarrassed about how wistful it sounds. He forces a little laugh out and continues, “But you’ve got Yakov beside you, and I wouldn’t have let him coach you if he weren’t the best. Just don’t pay him too much attention if he starts gesturing a lot, he only says things worth listening to when his arms are crossed instead of flapping about. Don’t try the quadruple flip again—we haven’t practiced it enough, you still only land it about ten percent of the time. Save it for the Grand Prix Final.”

There’s silence on the other end, and Victor wonders just how prickly Yuri’s feeling right now. His attempt to forbid the difficult jump might have just ensured Yuri would try it again out of sheer spite.

“Victor.”

Victor swallows down a sigh and shifts in the seat, feeling like he’s in for a scolding. _Which of us is the student and which the teacher?_ “Yes?”

“You are here with me.”

Victor wonders if Yuri can hear his heartbeat thudding through the phone. Wonders if Yuri’s heart is crashing against his ribcage just the same. Wonders how they’ll both sleep tonight without that feeling of a beat under a palm that says, _You’re not alone_.

This thing between them is getting pleasurably out of hand.

Victor smiles and closes his eyes, reveling in the feeling—and nearly drops his phone when it beeps angrily into his ear.

_Shutting down . . . 57 seconds_ , the display on the screen warns him.

“Oh, well that’s just _great_ ,” Victor loudly complains before bringing the phone back to his ear. “My phone’s about to shut itself off,” he explains with a miserable groan. “Dead battery. I’m sorry, Yuri. One more thing before I go! Go back to sleep. You have time and you need it. Don’t argue with your coach.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Yuri says. “Don’t worry about me—your job is to think about Makkachin, remember? Just think about how you’re going to spoil him when you get back home.” It feels like a warm embrace when Yuri adds, “I’ll be right behind you.”

“We’ll be waiting,” Victor says. “Now sleep. You have an audience to amaze tonight with the music of your body.”

“You’re so embarrassing,” Yuri says, and then he’s gone.

It startles Victor a little to realize then how much he already misses Yuri. His presence, his smile, that voice that was just in his ear 20 seconds ago. It isn’t a brutal feeling, no punch to the gut or knife to the chest. It’s like a day where there’s no sun but the air is kind of warm and heavy, and he just wants the sound of Yuri’s laughter cutting through the silence.

It’s a new thing: missing someone. And it isn’t a pleasant feeling. But having someone _to_ miss . . . that’s something different entirely.

He isn’t alone. The revelation softens the edges of the worry and fear he’s been feeling since last night’s phone call. Makkachin has been his constant companion since he was 12 years old, and the only family he’s cared to acknowledge for the past several years. Losing him—the possibility makes Victor’s gut twist painfully. But if the worst should happen to Makkachin . . . he won’t have to face it alone. _You are here with me_.

Aboard the plane, Victor closes his eyes and sinks back into the seat, imagining a hotel room with a large red suitcase at the foot of the bed and a pair of skates in the corner. He pictures the bed with the downy duvet, the outline of a body beneath it, black hair against the pillow. He can almost feel the warmth of it, the comfort of a beat under his palm. And he sleeps.


End file.
